anxiety
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The most bizarre feeling – I’ll never get over it – of watching a suicidal patient. That is my role tonight, on my last night before a couple days off. Every time I peek in on him, I’m taken back immediately to the mental hospital, forced to wear an anti-suicide turtle suit, and an aide…
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I can’t get them out of my head, the terrible flashbacks. A violent detainment, struggling in restraints, paranoid and angry and suicidal. Feeling a profound fear that something much worse than death was going to happen to me. Feeling intense anger as I was drugged with a shot to my shoulder. Feeling a profound sense…
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I am so absolutely offended right now. That is hard to do. It’s disgusting – an unelected, un-American, out of touch billionaire who has never done a day of service in his life has no business asking me, a veteran, about what I do for veterans here at the VA hospital. But President Musk has…
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More psych patients – on a nephrology floor. He tried to hang myself, like I tried to do ten years ago. Family found him, he was intubated, and then extubated, and is waiting on being medically cleared to the psych unit. He’s a 1:1 for safety. I’ve noticed my new coworkers don’t make me sit…
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I could not sleep today. I took my meds but tossed and turned, images and memories burned into my brain, playing like a bad movie. I had a half dream/half memory of several people wrestling me into a bed and strapping me in. I could feel their needles as they shot me with drugs to…
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As I sit with a schizophrenic patient in the same locking restraints in which I found myself not that long ago, I feel a tiredness I haven’t felt in a long time. To be sure, I didn’t think I could do this, I really didn’t. I’m still not sure how I am, other than white…
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I’m leaving early tonight and hanging out with Ceila as we do at this time of night – 3 in the morning – every two weeks. We used to work together on nights and now this is like our homage to that. Usually we go to Dennys but tonight it’s drinks at her house and…
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My mood is so intensely labile. I spend nights at work cracking bad jokes, riffing on everyone around me and generally being quite ornery. I spend days often staring into space, at the wall, or overcome with sadness. But at least that’s better than doomscrolling, right? I swing like a pendulum and I have to…
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A polar vortex is moving through Washington, specifically, Eastern Washington and Idaho. It has been so bitterly cold, down to 1 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit. I constantly worry about the pipes freezing at either of my two properties when the weather gets this absurdly cold. I sound like a broken record reminding my tenants to…
Documenting my journey through the mental health system 